


(oh brother) I Will Hear You Call

by fatedfeathers



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Episode 26 spoilers, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Some Episode 27 Spoilers, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 15:59:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15416493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatedfeathers/pseuds/fatedfeathers
Summary: She’d never gotten a moment to ask him.Now she never would.——————Beau has a moment alone with Molly’s cards.





	(oh brother) I Will Hear You Call

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Hey Brother by Avicii

_“Mollymauk said not to steal things from nice people.”_

_“Is that what you think I’m doing here?”_

_“No. No, I think you should take what you can. But I can’t… I can’t take this one.”_

Beau kept playing over Nott’s words in her head, Molly’s coin purse hanging at her side, his stupid _fucking_ tarot cards tucked into a pocket, both weighing heavier than they had any fucking right to. She thought of his sword, the fancy one, the one that let him disappear and reappear across the battlefield, hidden safely away. His necklace, the one he bought from Pumat when they were still new in Zadash, _still new to each other,_ hanging around Caleb’s neck. She wondered if Caleb felt the same inordinate weight attached to the items that she did.

She snorted. _Inordinate._ Gods, she was spending too much fucking time around Caleb, that was a fucking fancy word like he would use.

Beau paused. _His necklace…_ wasn’t it supposed to help when he dropped unconscious? Hadn’t it done that when they fought in the Victory Pit? Why the fuck hadn’t it worked? Was it defective? Was giving it to Caleb a bad idea? Caleb was squishy enough as it is, he didn’t need a defective necklace adding to that, one that couldn’t even _do its fucking job and keep Molly alive—_

The _crack_ of her fist meeting the trunk of a tree was enough to stop that train of thought in its tracks. She stood, pressed up against the tree, and used the pain in her knuckles and the rough feel of the bark on her skin to ground herself, bring it back in. She reached into her pocket for Molly’s cards, gripping them tight in the hand not still pressed against the tree _(and probably bruised and bloodied now, too, from hitting the bark so hard)_.

“This would be so much easier if you hadn’t gone and fucking _died,_ you _asshole,”_ she muttered under her breath. “I wouldn’t have to fucking feel guilty for taking your shit off your dead body _because there wouldn’t have fucking been a body in the first place!”_

She pushed back from the tree, just enough to swing at it again, with another resounding _crack._ She winced and shook out her hand, but the pain lacing up her hand and through her arm was bracing, grounding. Still just far enough away to be within striking distance of the tree, she pulled back and kicked it once, hard, just for good measure before spinning around and sinking to the ground, back up against the trunk.

Still shaking her hand out from the pain of slamming her bare knuckles into the tree trunk, twice in a row, she dug around in her pocket for Molly’s cards. She’d never spent much time looking through them, never putting much stock in the tiefling’s bullshit that he spun around them, but part of her always wondered if there wasn’t a kernel of truth at the center of his bullshit. There had to have been—Jester had used her fancy fucking spell on him, and he’s answered. He couldn’t have lied under the influence of her spell, but Beau could never be sure. She’d never gotten a moment to ask him.

Now she never would.

Her hands were shaking so badly as she pulled the cards out of her pocket, they fell from her grasp and scattered across the grass and dirt in front of her. Two landed face up in front of her in a patch of moonlight, almost deliberate, though Beau was sure there was no one else around.

The first was of a masked figure, indeterminate gender, walking with a dog by their side. It was hard to tell, with the mask, where they were looking; they could have been looking over their shoulder, or up to the sky, or down to the little white dog, but they were looking somewhere other than the direction they were walking. They carried a walking stick, taller than they were, and wore a long fur cloak that blew back in some breeze. At first glance, the cloak almost looked like hair, but on further inspection could be recognized for what it was. In the background, a tall building or series of buildings sat on the edge of a cliff that the figure was walking away from. There was a zero at the top and bottom of the card, in a thin black border. Beau couldn’t suppress the thought that she was glad she hadn’t drawn this card the night before.

The second card was upside down. Beau almost reached to spin it to face her, but something stopped her just before she touched the card. She shuddered, goosebumps rising on her arms.

“Fucking cold northern nights,” she muttered, rather than give voice to the unsettling feeling creeping down her spine.

The second card, while the first had been focused in shades of green for grass and then grey and tan and brown and pale for the figure and their clothes and the blue in the back for the sky almost an afterthought, was a study in shades of blues and greens, it seemed. The sky took up a good portion of the background, with clouds a shade between blue and white. A figure, feminine in form, with skin just a shade lighter than the mint blue of her dress, stood on a snowy mountain peak with her jade green hair blowing in the wind and her hand on the shoulder of a roaring lioness of the same minty blue as her own skin and gown. This card was marked with an XI in the thin black borders on the top and bottom.

If there was a message, a meaning to the cards dropped in front of her, Beau didn’t fucking get it.

“What the fuck do you want me to do with this?” She asked nobody in particular. “I don’t even fucking _believe_ in this horseshit! That was all Molly and Jester and I don’t know, maybe some other people in the group, but it wasn’t me! I don’t fucking know what this means! I don’t know what you want me to do! _I don’t know what the fuck you’re saying to me!”_ Her voice broke on the last sentence.

“I don’t know what you’re saying, Molly. Or whoever the fuck you are, but I really fucking hope it’s you, jackass. Don’t tell the others I said that, ok?”

Beau let her head fall back against the tree trunk with a less-than-gentle _thunk_ and made a few aggressive swipes against her eyes with the backs of her hands, staring up at the moon, before looking back at the cards. Zero, upright, and eleven, reversed. Someone would have to know what the fuck that meant.

Until then, she gathered the cards up and shoved them back in her pocket.

They were probably bullshit, anyways.

**Author's Note:**

> The cards were The Fool and Justice (reversed). The Fool is representative of Molly, and reversed Justice is his death being unjust and too soon.
> 
> I spent. Way too long choosing what cards to use and [what deck to use](http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/dream-enchantress/) and I’m really proud of how this turned out? Feel free to drop a comment telling me anything that you particularly liked about it! I do my best to always reply to all my comments
> 
> <3<3<3


End file.
